You knew it wouldn't last. While you rejoiced when SOPA/PIPA were publicly hung for being draconian crimes against the people, you secretly also knew that dark forces were already planning their reincarnation.

That reincarnation now has a name: PrECISE Act

This time, rather than screaming about "piracy" to take away your privacy and rights, they're screaming about "security".

Quote from: Benjamin Franklin

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

A recent bill in the House – the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011 or PrECISE Act — also empowers DHS in the event of a cyberattack, but the bill has been criticized by Reid as not giving the agency enough power.

...

Reid favors an approach that would expand DHS authority beyond currently regulated “critical infrastructure,” such as utilities and financial institutions, to also include Internet service providers and private networks.

Not enough power? Just how much power do these people want? The answer? Well, isn't it obvious? ALL the power.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet.

Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.

A classified meeting behind closed doors in October 2011 between key Senate committee leaders with jurisdiction over cybersecurity and White House officials, took place at the request of the Obama administration. Lieberman, in an interview with The Hill in October, said that past Senate cybersecurity bills were considerably stronger than the White House proposal.

Shrouded in secrecy? Kind of like how ACTA was? You mean trying to steal human rights in the middle of the night? Again?

We shouldn't have to worry about this kind of garbage. We should be spending our time in threads of interest like this one, rather than trying to spread awareness about tyrants trying to enslave us.

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Update February 10:

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Majority Spokesperson Leslie Phillips told The Daily Caller Friday the bill does not regulate the Internet or information, and that any regulatory authority associated with the bill would be extremely narrow.

Phillips told TheDC that the purpose of this bill is to improve the security of critical infrastructure networks that control the energy or water supply, the financial sector or nuclear facilities – networks, which if attacked could cause mass death or catastrophic damage to the economy or national security. The bill also covers federal civilian networks. “We’re not talking about music files,” said Phillips. “We’re talking about life-sustaining services. This is not a regulatory bill. This is a national security bill.”

Phillips also told TheDC that the bill has not been shrouded in secrecy. “We have been circulating drafts of this bill for months.”

And we should all just go back to sleep and trust these people that NEVER lie about anything like the USS Maine, or the Gulf of Tonkin, or the "oral office", or not molesting children, or...

These people have a strong history of lying at every turn.

But we shouldn't give up or stop. Because the price of freedom is vigilance.

It is worth repeating...

Quote from: Benjamin Franklin

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Well, this ARS Technica article seems like quite a good summary of how ACTA forms what looks rather like just a part of a decades-long subterfuge to wrap up "intellectual property" and copyright as an American asset: ACTA is part of a multi-decade, worldwide copyright campaign(Go to the article, which contains embedded links, and the user comments are worth reading. The spoiler below contains just the text.)

Spoiler

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ACTA is part of a multi-decade, worldwide copyright campaignBy Timothy B. Lee | Published February 20, 2012 10:30 AM

Last week, we observed that major content companies have enjoyed a steady drumbeat of victories in Congress and the courts over the last two decades. The lobbying and litigation campaigns that produced these results have a counterpart in the executive branch. At the urging of major copyright holders, the Obama administration has been working to export restrictive American copyright laws abroad. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is just the most visible component of this ambitious and long-running project.

Ars Technica recently talked to Michael Geist, a legal scholar at the University of Ottawa, about this effort. He told us that rather than making their arguments at the World Intellectual Property Organization, where they would be subject to serious public scrutiny, the US and other supporters of more restrictive copyright law have increasingly focused on pushing their agenda in alternative venues, such as pending trade deals, where negotiations are secret and critics are excluded.

The growing opposition to ACTA in Europe suggests this strategy of secrecy may have backfired. But the US is not giving up. It has already begun work on its next secret agreement, ealled the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Geist told Ars that restoring balance to copyright law will require reformers to be as determined as their opponents have been. He said that donating to public interest groups that focus on international copyright issues is the best way to make sure that the public interest is well-represented.

Exporting copyright law

Countries have been negotiating international copyright treaties for more than a century, but the passage of two treaties in the 1990s represented a turning point in international copyright law.

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, signed in 1994, made protection of copyrights a requirement of membership in the World Trade Organization. Countries that failed to meet international copyright standards could face trade sanctions. The 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty further ratcheted up the minimum requirements for copyright protection—requiring, for example, that signing countries regulate the circumvention of digital rights management schemes.

WIPO's relatively open structure meant that major copyright holders didn't get everything they wanted in the 1996 treaty. For example, Geist said, the United States was unable to get the strong anti-circumvention language it preferred into the WIPO treaty.

"WIPO is a place that's more open than it used to be," Geist told Ars. "Because of the consensus-based approach, there is a necessity to engage in negotiating." Indeed, in recent years reformers have begun to make headway themselves. Treaties to liberalize copyright in ways that benefit libraries and the blind are now under consideration at WIPO.

So, Geist said, the US has increasingly engaged in forum-shopping, bypassing WIPO and pushing for stronger copyright protection in a wide variety of other venues. For example, the United States has negotiated a series of bilateral trade agreements with nations such as South Korea, Australia, and Chile. While they're branded as free-trade deals, they also require the other country to adopt the more punitive copyright regime favored by the United States.

The negotiations over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement were part of this trend. In contrast to the relatively open WIPO process, ACTA was negotiated in secret by a relatively small number of mostly wealthy countries. The developing nations who would be the most likely to object weren't invited to participate. The plan was to present the finished treaty to the world on a "take it or leave it" basis.

Unfortunately, the plan didn't work as well as its backers had hoped. Early drafts of the treaty leaked, giving opponents time to organize against the most extreme provisions in the treaty. And the secretive and non-representative nature of the negotiation process created a bad taste in the mouths of many stakeholders. Concerns over ACTA's secretive drafting process may have been as important as any of the treaty's substantive provisions in generating European opposition. If Europe fails to ratify ACTA, it will dramatically weaken the treaty.

Try, try again

But the US isn't giving up. To the contrary, the US and its industry backers seem to have concluded the problem with ACTA was that they didn't try hard enough to lock down the negotiating process. So they're now plowing forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This time, the US has cut the leak-prone Europeans out of the process, limiting negotiations to eight countries such as New Zealand and Peru that are much easier for the United States to intimidate. Presumably, the goal is to enshrine the US's preferred copyright policies in the TPP and then use the TPP as a template for future agreements.

Once the US gets a critical mass of countries to sign a deal, it can then use other carrots and sticks to pressure additional countries to sign on. Geist said one important tool is the so-called "Special 301" list, an annual watchlist of countries Washington considers to have insufficiently strict copyright laws. Not only will countries be pressured to sign onto ACTA, the US may also press them to implement even those provisions of ACTA that the agreement itself labels as optional.

Geist believes that the interests behind SOPA and ACTA are likely to view recent defeats as temporary setbacks. "They're not playing for next year," he said. "They're playing for 10 years and 20 years in the future."

He said that reformers can resist their agenda, but only if they play the same "long game" as their opponents. Ordinarily, the most important thing a citizen of a democracy can do to stop bad public policies is to call their legislators. But in this case, most of the action is occurring in international organizations where individual legislators have little influence.

To fight agreements like ACTA requires organizations with the sophistication and resources to navigate the complex world of international diplomacy. Geist pointed to Knowledge Ecology International, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation as examples of organizations with a track record of resisting the drive toward ever-stronger copyright protection.These organizations are "WIPO regulars" well positioned to stay in the trenches and ensure the public interest is well-represented regardless of the venue. Geist said that donating to these organizations is the most effective way for ordinary voters to help resist the worldwide trend toward ever-more-extreme copyright laws.

This would seem to be the ideology of capitalism in a serious play for position over the long haul, and there's probably not a damned thing you can do about it.

Good quote from the article:

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"The World Intellectual Property Organization is a relatively representative body. Which might be why the US has been avoiding it."

I'll make this worse with the PC-FIPA Act. Once again, Lamar Smith at the helm. You don't want to know what the title means. Which is the point of my diatribe. Just trust me it's evil. Crush it. HR-1981 United States Congress House.

If this is serious, these guys have lost it. Without even addressing how right/wrong it is, to me it just demonstrates someone who is totally out of touch, especially given the authority that he is trusted with: an authority that directly affects the lives of a hell of a lot of people. Where are the intelligent people? Where are they? Where can I go to find them? Are they all running away and hiding?

If this is serious, these guys have lost it. Without even addressing how right/wrong it is, to me it just demonstrates someone who is totally out of touch, especially given the authority that he is trusted with: an authority that directly affects the lives of a hell of a lot of people. Where are the intelligent people? Where are they? Where can I go to find them? Are they all running away and hiding?

Well, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but, just because I do not agree with an argument that seems stupid to me doesn't of itself necessarily make it an invalid argument.What Senator Orrin Hatch says actually could makes sense if you look at it from a different viewpoint:

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If the objectives are (say) "cyber-security on the Internet" and the combat of piracy on the Internet, then lock the internet away from all users so that the medium can no longer be used for breaching security or copyright piracy. Problem solved?

Then let the users back on to the Intenet via a user-pays fully censored account only, and charge them a high rate for notional resource utilisation - including those resources used for the censors' logging/analysing your traffic data. For example, CPU-seconds, disk I/O operation counts, network data transfer throughput volumes and bandwidth utilisation. And don't forget to tax the net consumption. Cost recovery at the source and a potential gravy tax train. Redolent of the old mainframe time-sharing days. Let resource price and the propensity to buy be the controlling factors for demand, as they are in most well-organised capitalist markets.

Alternatively, ban the use of the Internet except for an elite. The latter would be those who were deemed "responsible" enough or have a proven critically important service that necessitates using the Internet.

On a project where we were planning to connect the Defence network to points in the Internet, a Defense network engineer said (thinking aloud) to me, something like:

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We really need to expand the secure Defence CUG (Closed User Group) network so as to communicate with our own and other countries' Defense/Police agencies on a regular basis around the world, and controlled by us. Ideally, we would want to turn the Internet into our proprietary, enlarged Defence CUG, with no other (non-Defence) users connected to it without our authority and control.

I guess the trouble with Open Systems is the fact of life that, by definition, they are likely to be less secure than closed ones.

This presumably won't stop some people - e.g., including Senator Orrin Hatch and others - who will persist in trying to implement an almost Fascist-like control over freedom of access and use of the Internet.We have too much freedom and it has to stop?

Fairly simple solution: Take a tip from Gandhi - declare a general I-Strike.

Stop using the web.

Send a clear message to business (don't bother with the government - go directly to those who really pull the strings) that they can force through whatever legislation they want - but you will refuse to use the net under those rules.

Imagine - iTunes, Amazon, and B&N revenues drop suddenly. Media purchases and rentals dry up. Banks suddenly get deluged with paper checks and requests for them to go back to sending you paper statements each month. No more online payments being made. No more tax filings done online. Paper, paper, paper everywhere! Everything goes back to 1988.

Imagine the cost of doing business if that suddenly happens...

Some years ago the State of California passed a proposition that attempted to control public medical costs by setting firm caps (and reductions) on what the medical profession and hospitals could charge. It was hailed as a major win for the consumer. It was gonna show those greedy doctors who was in charge.

Guess what? The doctors stopped reporting for work. Hospitals shut down everything except emergency services. Nurses didn't show up for the shifts.

Because what the politicians of California seemed to forget was that this is a capitalist economy. So while it's all well and good to say "Hell no! We won't pay those prices!" it overlooks the possibility that those on the receiving end might well say "Well I'm not willing to work for you under the terms you're offering."

And medical professionals said exactly that. And so much for that proposition as a result.

Okay, let's get back on target. You can't do an iStrike and ... expect it to work. All you get is 13 months without any fun content. You are outweighed here by a MINIMUM of 70-30. And those are "Pirates", so you're at 90-10 levels.

We need a USA-Wide National effort that can see Candidates past the speeches that the Authorized Media pronounces, we were too early in 2008, but no bad to avoid Sarah Palin ... But Not really great with Obama and 6 copyright czars....

Okay, let's get back on target. You can't do an iStrike and ... expect it to work.

Why not?

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All you get is 13 months without any fun content.

Small price to pay to put an end to the nonsense.

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We need a USA-Wide National effort that can see Candidates past the speeches that the Authorized Media pronounces, we were too early in 2008, but no bad to avoid Sarah Palin ... But Not really great with Obama and 6 copyright czars....

I think we'd collectively have a better chance at simultaneously hitting Powerball and getting a night with Angelina Jolie than we have with that. Our political institutions are morally bankrupt at this point: incapable of reforming from within - and utterly resistant to any efforts at reform from without.

If there is any morality left in Washington it doesn't amount to much more than the integrity of a sleazebag who stays bought.

I really don't think anything short of an economic general strike that disrupts "business as usual" (and has a measurable financial impact) has any hope of success in bringing about much needed reform.

And perhaps now is the time to do it while it's still legal to do so. Because given a few more years going down the road we're on, making suggestions such as this may be viewed as a threat to domestic security - with all that implies under our new post-constitutional legal framework.

This has already happened, or is happening, in other places. Some of which call and believe themselves to be "democracies." Watch the evening news for examples.

^^To me, on a smaller more personal scale, this means to watch what I spend my money on. I'm trying my best to give money directly to those who are producing what I desire. For example, instead of handing my money to the cashier, I'd rather hand it to a neighbor growing tomatoes. The problem is the big expenses, the ones that count, those go directly into the system and all sorts of people you don't know about nor ever will get their hands on it immediately. These are things like mortgages, most kinds of leases, internet/mobile services, those big electronic purchases you save for, etc. It's tough.

Practicing this is also difficult because it's more work. I have to think about who are the right people that I want to pay. I have to look for and find people who are good at what they do. It involves a lot of interaction, a lot of legwork. It could all be for naught, but it feels good.

There are a few companies which would NEVER get my money, like Sony Music. Weird enough that many artists still think they need a big marketing company to promote their stuff, even in times of the internet.

There are a few companies which would NEVER get my money, like Sony Music. Weird enough that many artists still think they need a big marketing company to promote their stuff, even in times of the internet.

There are a few companies which would NEVER get my money, like Sony Music. Weird enough that many artists still think they need a big marketing company to promote their stuff, even in times of the internet.

There are a few companies which would NEVER get my money, like Sony Music. Weird enough that many artists still think they need a big marketing company to promote their stuff, even in times of the internet.

Just get yourself a Rasberry Pi to sooth the unbearable urges of your inner geek. They're only $25 - and they'll be shipping very shortly.

What an absolutely brilliant idea. I used to teach O level and A level computer science and it has become a source of real frustration that schools now only really teach packages. Brilliant article and a fantastic idea. I might just buy 10 and give them away to local kids in a competition!

In reference to the overreaching of bills like SOPA, PIPA, etc., let me relate a hilarious incident that happened at work the other day...

We have this one bleeding-heart liberal in the office who likes to argue with the rest of us sensible folks about SOPA and other protections. He's a strong advocate of taking away what I, and many of us, consider essential freedoms. He believes normal citizens shouldn't be allowed to own guns (that's only for law enforcement and military), that Obama is wonderful, etc. You get the picture...

So, we got tired of this *!+@, and whipped up the following little program (I've since modified it slightly on my own PC).

The program presents a full-screen app that looks like a system-level message. It has the emblem of Homeland Security on it, and explanatory text that the user's computer will be scanned for fiiles that may be threats to homeland security, or else violations of the soon-to-be-law SOPA.

After giving the user time to read this dire warning, the program begins going through top-level files in the user's Music, Pictures, and My Videos folders, deleting files. It doesn't really delete any files, but sure looks like it is -- progress bar and all. The user can try escaping with Alt-tab, Ctrl-Escape, even Ctrl-Alt-Del then Task Manager -- all to no avail.

Buddy of mine wrote a batch file to call this program on the target employee's machine about 2 minutes after log-on. This guy has a laptop and is a low-level manager, and is known to have lots of mp3's, pictures (don't ask), etc. on his laptop. You shoulda heard the uproar!

After the incident, one of our IT guys with a poker face explained that this behavior would be seen more and more, as Microsoft is incorporating such measures in its Windows Updates, to comply with entertainment industry demands, etc. Had the guy pretty torn up.

Needless to say, we let the dummy in on the truth, and removed the program for him. He has since then changed his opinion toward SOPA at least (he's also changed his laptop password).

After giving the user time to read this dire warning, the program begins going through top-level files in the user's Music, Pictures, and My Videos folders, deleting files. It doesn't really delete any files, but sure looks like it is -- progress bar and all. The user can try escaping with Alt-tab, Ctrl-Escape, even Ctrl-Alt-Del then Task Manager -- all to no avail.

Cool ... But it should have some type of kill code for emergencies. ...Either way I just know this will come it handy at some point. Thanks for sharing!

Nice hoax. Doesn't look super official though, and that's probably for the best in case you're gonna get in trouble for impersonating a federal office or whatever.

Love it...but....um, yeah. You might want to come up with a logo for a wholly fictitious agency or industry watchdog for this. You're sailing out on dangerous waters using the logo of a real one. Even as a joke.

Cool ... But it should have some type of kill code for emergencies. ...Either way I just know this will come it handy at some point. Thanks for sharing!

It's coded so that it only examines the top-level files in the Videos, Pictures, and Music directories. Also, the more files there are, the faster it processes them. The entire program execution-time on my machine (it processes 150 files) is 51 seconds. It's just designed to give a quick scare. Most people don't keep a whole lot of files in the root of those particular directories, but rather use subdirectories for various genres, file-dates, etc.